Koth's Big Black Deck

[hamfactorial]

This is my funsies Koth deck that I like to take into the tourney practice room and blow off steam. I figure it's solid enough that we could probably make it better with some tuning.

[Deck=Koth's BBD]
Creatures:8
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant

Spells:27
2 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Forked Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Rakdos's Return
4 Searing Blaze
2 Hammer of Purphoros
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Koth of the Hammer
2 Batterskull

Lands:25
4 Arid Mesa
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Blood Crypt
4 Marsh Flats
5 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn

Sideboard:15
4 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Rakdos Charm
2 ???
2 Dismember
3 Blood Moon[/deck]

It's a fairly straightforward deck. Keep the board clear with cheap burn and Liliana, gain CA (real or virtual) with Grim Lavamancer and Dark Confidant, then finish them with Koth's 4/4 Mountain beat down. If the game goes long, sink extra Koth mana onto Bonfire or
Rakdos' Return, or turn them into Golem tokens. Or make a 4/4 germ token and watch it collect tears.

Value!

[Pedros]

Why no Chandra? ooks like good home for it.

[hamfactorial]

There's certainly room for Chandra. I've dropped the Hammers, so I'll play a few Chandra and see how I like her.

Chandra's Phoenix was in the original list as a discard outlet for Liliana, but I had issues with a curve that was too heavy. I picked Forked Bolt, Searing Blaze, Bonfire, and Arc Trail so I could control the board and recur Phoenix easily.

I think that version would perform better with Chandra in place of Koth.

[Pedros]

To be honest this looks like a perfect shell for stuff like Pack Rats. Makes every not needed removal and discard good.
Plus this value from YP.

Perfect shell for pyroblack? ;P

[hamfactorial]

I was testing Pack Rat last night, really enjoyed it

I was running Dismember in place of Searing Blaze, and it felt good to discard weak cards EOT (Bonfire, Forked Bolt) against Twin to make a rat army and fuel up my Lavamancer.

[Pedros]

How do you like running all 4 Grim Lavamancers? dont you flood with them?

[hamfactorial]

Sometimes, yeah, but he's basically kill-on-sight so drawing him in multiple is fine. A T1 Grim almost never lives if my opponent has removal.

[Pedros]

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28 ... -Jund.html

Something for ya.

[hamfactorial]

Looks very similar to a brew of mine, except he's playing discard and I'm packing more burn. Love it!

[hamfactorial]

This is my similar brew -

[deck]BR Trololo[/deck]

Maybe I should be running Mutavaults in there.

[Khaospawn]

With Pack Rat in the deck? Yes, you should!

[Pedros]

The only thing I dont like are 2 bonfires, but if they work for you, go for it!

If you run 4! Lavamancers, run more fetchlands.

Dont really understand what did you did to a deck that you dont have a single discard spell

[hamfactorial]

I've just never liked discard spells, since they're terrible in a top deck war and can't stop anything after it's already been cast.

But then again, Jund runs them to great success so maybe I'm just being a dumbass

[Khaospawn]

Just be Jund without the Green.

Boo Tarmogoyf!

[hamfactorial]

Goyf is a nerd

[hamfactorial]

[deck]RB Troll loo looolo[/deck]

Plays better than you'd expect, VNH is actually pretty boss with access to Slaughter Pact against Twin.

Played for a while with Gatekeeper of Malakir, but it was a bit redundant with access to Liliana.

[stuffydollfan]

Hi everybody, I've been looking to get into modern and this deck piques my interest quite a bit. I like the Jund minus the green idea, and the first deck list using Koth. My question is if there was any way the deck can be played without the fetches? Or are they really necessary in here?

[hamfactorial]

The Koth deck needs fetches to keep the Mountain count high while being able to hit [mana]BB[/mana] for Liliana.

You could play the Chandra/Lili version without fetches and just load up on dual lands. Makes Grim Lavamancer pretty weak though, but that's ok. I think that version is the better deck.

[hamfactorial]

Final verdict on Lavaclaw Reaches is , they're too expensive to activate and the CIPT is a big drawback. Changed to Blackcleave Cliffs and 4 Mutavault.

[deck]BR Trolos[/deck]

Bloodghast is an excellent discard outlet to Liliana and Pack Rat, and I have enough land to bring them back anytime.

[hamfactorial]

Sword of Feast and Famine is many times better than Sword of Fire and Ice, especially attached to Flamespeaker.

The search for the perfect 2-drop continues, however. Bloodghast is ok, but not amazing like Dark Confidant and Pack Rat.

[Toddington]

Sword of Feast and Famine

Prophetic Flamespeaker

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK

[hamfactorial]

cast all the things!

I'm running 2 SoFaF now, it's unreal.

[Khaospawn]

It's so veiny!

[hamfactorial]

The goat!

[Pedros]

Sword of Feast and Famine is many times better than Sword of Fire and Ice, especially attached to Flamespeaker.

The search for the perfect 2-drop continues, however. Bloodghast is ok, but not amazing like Dark Confidant and Pack Rat.

Do you need any more 2 drop?

[hamfactorial]

I'm not sure. There are games where I draw my Flamespeakers, Chandra and Batterskull and I'm effectively dead on turn 3 before I get to play anything relevant. 1/2 drops help a lot with the slow start.

Maybe I just need to play the control game and run more removal.

[hamfactorial]

Currently testing Bile Blight and enjoying it as a pseudo-Bolt/Bonfire against the token decks.

[hamfactorial]

I was playing for a few hours this morning in the MTGO practice room and getting decisively destroyed by the world's most awful decks (Burn, Scapeshift, Bogles, some mono-black discard pile). Cheese, basically, so I was on turbo tilt.

Instead of raging like a goblin, I thought "hmm, what's the most irritating thing I can do to people in the new post-Pod format?"

The most irritating thing I could think of was killing people with a bunch of burn, creature kill spells to clear the board, and my buddy Koth as a win-con. I threw together this 3-color pile and started my revenge tour.

[deck]3 Kolor Koth v. 1.00[/deck]

Since FRF isn't released on MTGO yet, I'm rolling with Pillar of Flame since Pod's ban isn't effective yet. #yolo I'd rather have something else in the 1-spot, but couldn't think of anything worthwhile.

I played for another hour this morning, and then another hour tonight after I returned from the gym, and I found the deck to be fairly powerful. I didn't lose in 6 test matches, but that could just be the run-goods.

It turns out that being able to kill Siege Rhinos, all of Splinter Twin's dudes, sweep Affinity's small guys, and semi-reliably race Burn decks is good value. Getting access to Rakdos Charm and Hide // Seek plus Slaughter Games helps me against the retarded combo decks. I could play Blood Moon if I played a basic Plains and a Swamp, but I'm not sure that's even necessary.

Anyway, the deck is still fun, and fucking dudes up by pinging them with Mountains is very satisfying.

It could probably be better if I tuned it, so I'll sink some time into it this weekend. On my radar is Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, even though I think Stormbreath Dragon is better.

[GoblinWarchief]

Go with 4 stormbreath. They were my default choice in red skred until one day i just decided to play 1 stormbreath, 1 thundermaw, 1 sarkhan and 1 batterskull just because i wanted to give other dragons a chance. Batterskull was obviously good although slower, but i lost 2 games when my sarkhan/thundermaw just ate a path to exile.
Since then I'm playing 3 stormbreath 1 batterskull : if you're going to tap 5 mana for something in modern, it 'd better be resilient and not die to a path.

I think you also need something to avoid flooding , like chandra or magma jet (the latter is also decent with bonfire)

I definitely love slaughter games and i would probably play 4. Last months my metagame was infested with scapeshift and i always showed up at events with 4 slaughter games.... well, i think i lost one match out of 12 against scapeshift. Once i slaughtered scaopeshift, then slaughtered inferno titans, and since he was not willing to scoop i procedeed to draw my 2 remaining copies and slaughtered snapcaster mages and sakura tribe- elder

[hamfactorial]

Agreed on Stormbreath Dragon. I put him in there first as a 4-of, but didn't want to close off my thinking to Sarkhan if that may end up better.

I'm not sure how I can deal with flooding as a 25 land deck running red/white/black unless the card is 1-3 CMC and still helps me when I'm not flooding. The cantrip selection in these colors is poor, but I like your Magma Jet selection.

I can cut Terminate, replace it with Path to Exile, and swap Magma Jet in for Pillar of Flame without affecting the curve.

Flame Javelin may be too cute, but I do love 4 damage in a deck that can always hit [mana]RRR[/mana].

If Bonfire is too slow, I could go to 24 land and replace the 3 with 4 Volcanic Fallout, mitigating flood issues somewhat and hedging against Affinity, or replace Javelin with Fallout and keep a pair of Bonfires and more land.

Dunno, I'll think about it more.

Is pinging people to death with Mountains too much to ask?

[hamfactorial]

I goldfished a bunch at work to get the curve sorted out, figured out what I wanted from my mana base and SB, etc.

[deck]3 Kolor Koth v. 1.01[/deck]

I like this version because I can play a reactive game on turns 1-3, drop Koth on curve, then hold onto the board while ticking him up to finish the game. The key to fixing the curve was the inclusion of Devour Flesh, which lets me have an additional sacrifice effect similar to Liliana, but without having to tap out. I considered Norn's Annex as a way to protect myself on T3, but it's actively terrible unless I have a Koth to follow up. I liked Norn's Annex over Ensnaring Bridge because of its protection against Abrupt Decay.

In the flex spot, Pyrite Spellbomb cycles for 2 mana, or works as a slow colorless removal spell vs. mana dorks, pro-red stuff like Kor Firewalker and Etched Champion. I could play Relic here instead, but I have Rakdos Charm in the SB to deal with the GY. If the meta becomes all Dredge all day, I'll change this.

I put Blood Moon in the SB and added the necessary basic lands to operate under it, and a single Godless Shrine to help with the Mountain + fetchland openers where I need 3 colors.

I'm probably a G1 dog against Burn, so Leyline is the absolute best hate I can bring in. Assuming I can find it in sideboarded games, things should be fine, with possible applications against the black discard decks which I expect to run rampant after the Jan. 19 bans go into effect.

MTGO is on extended downtime, so I can't test this but I like the look.